7.30PM WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 18TH

 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL # 2 

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

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Closing out the year much as we began it we are once again in the company of the world's greatest living director Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, After Hours, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street) who brings us this stealth adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Certainly not a traditional or obvious adaptation of the Dicken's classic this 1999 film (celebrated here with a 25th Anniversary remaster) is a reliably unorthodox collaboration between Scorsese and renowned writer director Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters) that echoes their first ever collaboration in 1976's Taxi Driver.​ Despite being an altogether different type of film, Bringing Out The Dead does however return to the late night streets of New York and replaces DeNiro driving a cab with Nicholas Cage driving an ambulance.

 

Suffering from depression, insomnia, and occupational burnout, paramedic Frank (Cage) finds himself botching patient care and experiencing ghostly hallucinations. Collapsing under the strain of the job we follow Frank across three consecutive New York City night shifts accompanied by three different paramedics (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore) dealing with the kind of late night wildness only The Big Apple can deliver, his only salvation being a blossoming friendship with a recently treated patient's daughter in the form of the ever brilliant Patricia Arquette. 

 

One of the most underrated films of Scorsese's career it is directed with the all the virtuosity that one might expect from this true giant of cinema as well as being one of the more interesting works in his cannon, fusing the ghosts of Christmas with the night time hellscape of his beloved New York during the holiday season. Manic, poignant, funny, gothic, spiritual and compulsively entertaining, it's entirely fitting as our White Wall Cinema Christmas special and final event of 2024.